A radio communication system with two-way messaging communication between base stations and portable transceivers provides an important means for the base stations to determine the reliability of a message transaction. Two-way communication can be used by a caller accessing the radio communication system to determine that the called party has received the caller's page.
There are times when the called party desires to provide a lengthy message to the caller, such as a business client. For example, a stock broker may have been asked by his client to research a prospective company for investment purposes. Because of his busy schedule, the stock broker may not be available to respond to his client at the clients convenience.
In prior art systems, the called party (such as the stock broker discussed above) typically responds to messages by way of a conventional telephone. However, this approach may be impractical when the called party, for example, is traveling in an automobile and a cellular phone or other suitable communication device is unavailable. And even when a cellular phone is available, communicating lengthy messages may be too costly for the called party.
Thus, what is needed is a method and apparatus for communicating a user created message from a portable transceiver to a caller. In particular, it is desirable to provide the user of the portable transceiver with a convenient and cost effective method and apparatus for creating and storing the user created message corresponding in the portable transceiver for transmission to the caller.